Developmental changes in self-corrected elaboration effects on incidental memory

Abstract:  Two experiments were carried out to investigate the changes across age groups in the effects of self-corrected elaboration on incidental memory. Each participant performed an orienting task involving three conditions: self-corrected, self-generated and experimenter-provided elaboration. The orienting task was followed by free recall tests. In Experiment 1, the participants were sixth-grade and second-grade students. For sixth-grade students the self-corrected elaboration led to a better free recall than the other two elaborations, whereas for the second-grade students, no difference was observed between any of the three elaborations. In Experiment 2, using a longer word list than that in Experiment 1, the participants were undergraduates. The self-corrected and self-generated elaborations led to a better free recall than the experimenter-provided elaboration, and no difference between the former two elaborations was observed. The results obtained from these two experiments were interpreted as showing that the effectiveness of a self-corrected elaboration depends on the participants' age.     

The Effects of Thematic Importance on Story Recall among Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Comparison Children

This study examined the recall of televised stories for younger (4-6 years) and older (7-9 years) children with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) under two different viewing conditions (toys present/toys absent). Each child watched two Rugrats television programs, once with toys present and once with toys absent. Immediately after viewing a program, the child completed a free recall of the observed story. Comparison children's recall increased more than ADHD children's as importance level increased, and comparison children recalled more information overall than children with ADHD. When toys were present, children with ADHD retold less coherent stories than comparison children, as indexed by smaller correlations between the story units recalled and the order of these units in the story. In summary, children with ADHD demonstrated multiple difficulties in story comprehension. These findings add to our understanding of the differences in higher-order cognitive processing abilities between children with ADHD and comparison children, and suggest important areas of focus in designing more effective academic interventions for children with ADHD.     

回忆准备就绪程度的判断发展

实验采用 3× 3× 2 (年龄 ,材料 ,性别 )三因素混合实验设计 ,按照学习成绩好、中、差分层随机选取小二、初二、大二被试各 18名 ,其中男女各半 ,选用三种不同的实验材料 ,对被试回忆准备就绪程度的判断发展进行了实验研究 ,得到结论如下 :回忆准备就绪程度的判断准确性随年龄增长而提高 ;回忆准备就绪程度的判断的发展总体上与材料难度无关 ;回忆准备就绪程度的判断发展总体上的性别差异不显著 ;回忆准备就绪程度的判断水平与记忆成绩之间有较高正相关。     

Text recall and text recognition with and without a title

Abstract: Recall and recognition memory for a text were investigated in two conditions: in one, subjects could understand the text well because they were presented with the title of the text prior to reading it; in the other, they could not understand the text so well because they were not presented with the title. Results showed that recall was better and sentence recognition more accurate when subjects had understood the text. A 1-h delay of the memory test after reading decreased recall performance, but not recognition performance. Different memory representations may have been operating when subjects had understood the text from when they had not.     

Does a prototypical argumentative schema exist? Text recall in 8 to 13 years olds

120 students in grades 3 to 7 (aged 8 to 13) heard an argumentative text and were immediately submitted to a free recall task. The results show that before grade 7, the subjects did not view the text as argumentative. The discussion centers on the relevancy of a prototypical argumentative schema in accounting for these findings.     

Activation of emotion information in text among younger and older adults

The ability to represent emotions is an important capacity for the understanding of discourse. In the current literature, it is unclear whether older adults represent emotion information in the course of language processing, in particular as it relates to developing an adequate mental model of characters in narratives. We addressed this issue in two studies, one assessing emotion activation at the word level and the other at the mental model level. In the first experiment, subjects performed a lexical decision task in which words were drawn from both logic- and emotion-based categories. For both category types, priming was evident for young and old. In the second experiment, subjects read passages with emotion information that was consistent or inconsistent with the implied emotional tone. Both age groups showed an increase in reading time in response to inconsistent emotion information, indicating that the protagonist's emotional state was represented while reading. Results of these studies generally suggest age preservation in the activation of emotion information in language processing.     

Retrospective questions and correlations

In survey research it is not uncommon to ask questions of the following type: “How many times did you undertake actiona in reference periodT of length τ?.” The relationship is established between τ and the correlation of the number of reported actions with some background variable. To this end it is assumed that the process of actions satisfies a renewal model with individual heterogeneity. Also a model has to be formulated for possible recall effects. Applications are given in the field of medical consumption.     

Interactive context integration in children? Evidence from an action memory study

Action–object phrases (e.g., “lift the bottle”) are remembered better if they have been enacted rather than learned verbally. This enactment effect is largest in free recall for phrases with objects (e.g., “bottle”) present because these phrases can be interactively encoded with those context objects (interactive context integration) that serve as retrieval cues. The current study investigated whether 6- and 8-year-olds are already capable of interactive context integration. Experiment 1 demonstrated interactive context integration with 8-year-olds. This was hindered in a condition where attention was directed away from context objects. Experiment 2 demonstrated interactive context integration with 6-year-old kindergartners. Taken together, our findings show that even 6-year-olds are capable of incidental context integration through enactment and that this process is attention based.     

Automatic semantic encoding in verbal short-term memory: Evidence from the concreteness effect

The concreteness effect in verbal short-term memory (STM) tasks is assumed to be a consequence of semantic encoding in STM, with immediate recall of concrete words benefiting from richer semantic representations. We used the concreteness effect to test the hypothesis that semantic encoding in standard verbal STM tasks is a consequence of controlled, attention-demanding mechanisms of strategic semantic retrieval and encoding. Experiment 1 analysed the effect of presentation rate, with slow presentations being assumed to benefit strategic, time-dependent semantic encoding. Experiments 2 and 3 provided a more direct test of the strategic hypothesis by introducing three different concurrent attention-demanding tasks. Although Experiment 1 showed a larger concreteness effect with slow presentations, the following two experiments yielded strong evidence against the strategic hypothesis. Limiting available attention resources by concurrent tasks reduced global memory performance, but the concreteness effect was equivalent to that found in control conditions. We conclude that semantic effects in STM result from automatic semantic encoding and provide tentative explanations for the interaction between the concreteness effect and the presentation rate.     

A study of retrieval processes in action memory for school-aged children: the impact of recall period and difficulty on action memory

ABSTRACT

Research in action memory for adults has shown that enacted encoding is not only retrieved more frequently but is also faster in comparison to verbal encoding. The aim of this study was to investigate retrieval processes in terms of recall period and recall difficulty for different encoding conditions in school-aged children (8-, 10-, 12-, 14-years old). The participants studied verbal tasks, subject-performed tasks and experimenter-performed tasks, and received immediate and final free-recall tests. The results revealed that older children not only outperformed younger children in terms of accuracy but also outpaced them in all recall periods. Moreover, recalls of subject-performed tasks and experimenter-performed tasks were better and faster compared with verbal encoding on both types of recall test, by increasing throughout the recall periods. These results are discussed in terms of memory strategies and information processing methods. Pedagogic implications for the use of action memory in children's learning are also considered.